Monterey County Rant

I want this county to know what happened to itself. I want it to know how, when john steinbeck died and was resurrected, his dispossessed immigrants remained with browner skins. I want it to remember Robinson Jeffers never existed until he was gone. I want it to remember the Monterey Sculpture Center. I want it to know the vestiges of bohemia that were extirpated when Cannery Row was turned into a strip mall. I want it to remember Emil White and Jaime DeAngulo, but also to know about Roland Hall and Horst Mayer and Jack English and Grant Risdon. I want it to deal with the fact that marijuana cultivation created as much economy for art as rich patronage. I want it to forget about Esalen and the Post Ranch and Spanish Bay and know about the Stone House, Tassajara when it was a bootleg outlet, Mom's Home Cooking in Seaside. I want it to know where Lockwood is. I want it to smoke some Yerba Santa.

I want no more tee shirt shops. I want more Blonde Redhead in Big Sur, less Vivaldi in Carmel. I don't want my mom to have to call into the radio stations when they cannot pronounce Cachagua. I want realtors to stop saying Cachagua means Hidden Waters for more vineyards. I want less Clint Eastwood, more Teatro Campesino. I want white people to pronounce Robles del Rio correctly and stop pretending Greenfield does not exist. And for god's sakes, less fuckng golf. I want that guy who always used to run for mayor of Carmel on a platform of turning downtown into a carfree zone to come back. He was right. Paul Laub was wrong. About everything. More Nopalito rum, less chardonnay.

And here's what I'm going to do about it. I'm going to sneak into Pebble Beach to pick mushrooms. I'm going to misdirect tourists looking for the Hog's Breath. I'm going up to Tehama with a water canteen and ask them to give back some of the water they stole so I can go throw it back in the Carmel. I'm going to make moonshine from the old Jamesburg bootleg springs. I'm going to walk around Big Sur naked. A lot. And not play any damn conga drums. I'm going to wring the frickin' neck of anyone who was ever on the CalAm board of directors. I'm going to poach artichokes from the fields in Castroville and hand them out at Monday Night Dinner. I will never, ever, own a polo shirt. I'm going to write howling stories reconjuring the ghosts of Ben Blomquist and Buddy Jones and the erased Eselen. I'm going to catch sardines. I'm going to get drunk and squat the bushes of Trader Joe's. I'm going to turn over Pacific Grove young, queer families with good manners and a love of butterflies. I'm going to walk right through the front gate at Esalen with a bad attitude. I'm going to dumpster dive Bubba Gump's and hand out shrimp to homeless vets and strawberry field workers. I'm going to spend all day staring at tidepools, I'm going to seduce aimless tourists, I'm going to make kelp pickles. When they desalinate the bay so we can have more golf, I'm going to repipe the hot briny effluent into some French restaurant in Charmel.

You know why? Because that little boy in the Pagrovia mural where the Granary used to be. That's me. I am this county, and somebody tried to bury me in the parking lot of a tee shirt shop, the bottom of a Louis Vitton handbag, a pool of stagnant Carmel River water with dying steelhead for company. But there's got to be something better than this.